


Come Sail Your Ships Around Me and Burn Your Bridges Down

by what_alchemy



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Drinking, First Meetings, Infidelity, M/M, Rimming, Semi-Public Sex, Sobriety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27502654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: Tomorrow, Francis Crozier will marry Sophia Cracroft and embark on a life James can never touch.Tonight, James remembers.And hopes.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 28
Kudos: 70
Collections: Fall Fitzier Exchange, The Terror Bingo





	Come Sail Your Ships Around Me and Burn Your Bridges Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/gifts).



> For my dear reserve, who made not one but _two_ prompts that captured my imagination: a stag night encounter before Francis is to marry Sophia, and young, drunk, newly made Lieutenant Fitzjames having a run-in with Commander Crozier. How could I not combine the two? I tweaked as needed and here we are. I was so happy to write this for you! <3
> 
> The title is of course from [The Ship Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0spQCw35D4) by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. 
> 
> In addition to the Fall Fitzier exchange, this story fulfills the "optimism" square on my Terror Bingo card.

1850

One should not, James mused as he tied his cravat before the mirror, march disconsolate into the wedding celebrations of one’s dearest bosom friend as though one were off to the gallows. He cast his gaze dispassionately down his reflection as he smoothed his waistcoat—half a year back in civilization had eased the gauntness from his face and frame, but he had yet to attain the strength and power of his previous physique. He had returned to an England with new and exciting fashions, and indeed he had spent frivolously on a new wardrobe when he first arrived, but to his dismay he realized quite quickly that he no longer found any joy in it. This color or that on his wan, pallid complexion, wheresoever a frock coat nipped in or its hem hit, the cut of his trousers—what did it matter? Somewhere in the great white howl of hell lay the bodies of a hundred of Her Majesty’s men, and more than half a dozen natives besides. 

And, somewhere not far from these rooms, Francis Crozier was being fêted on the night before his marriage to Sophia. For which James was late.

James tried on a smile, but the result was a chilling rictus that made him look the ghoul, an uncanny haunt sent to torment the living. Was this shade a victim or a prowler? What business kept him tied to this mortal plane? Even James could not say. He dropped his eyes as soon as he met his own gaze by accident in the mirror. 

He tutted at himself. Black on black on black—he appeared to be going to a funeral. With a sigh he plucked the cravat from his neck and shrugged out of his waistcoat. He must put forth the effort to appear festive. Happy, even. Francis was getting everything he ever wanted. A knighthood. Sophia. A place at the table in the admiralty. Maybe even a child before the year was out.

James was glad for him, even as his own heart tore in twain. He turned from the hateful mirror and faced his selection of waistcoats again. What would Francis like, he wondered? The sapphire or burgundy or even the cheery burnt orange for which James had not yet had an occasion to wear?

James scoffed at himself. What did it matter? Francis would neither notice nor care. He snatched one up at random and slung it on, determined not to think on it.

So too did he not think on his first encounter with one Commander Crozier, so long ago now. He was ever so good about it—taking out the memory but once, twice a year to inspect and pore over and analyze to death.

But not tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, after the wedding and the reception. When he no longer had to smile and dance and congratulate the happy couple. When he could tip himself into a chair before his very own fire and be alone with his thoughts, his heartbreak, his accursed memory. 

He tied the knot on the cravat. He met his own terrible gaze in the mirror. His hair was curled and set, shot through with silver that made him feel positively elderly. An errant lock quivered listlessly in the wrong direction, and he yanked it down. He tried on another smile, and another, and another. He imagined reaching his hands out to Francis, taking one of his in both his own to shake, to savor. 

“Sir Francis,” he said, and at last his smile reached his eyes.

1837

The champagne at the Admiralty banquet was more potent than James had originally credited. His limbs felt loose and fizzy as the drink itself. He weaved his way through the crowd towards the toilet, swaying and jubilant, trading backslaps with other newly minted officers along the way. He relieved himself and winked at his reflection in the mirror before he returned to the ballroom. He lifted another flute of champagne from a passing waiter and drained half of it in one swallow. He scanned the room for one of his compatriots—he hadn’t seen Dundy all night, for example—but caught, instead, a glimpse of someone with a commander’s rank insignia duck behind a curtain and into an ancillary room. 

James’s imagination tickled him as surely as the bubbles in his drink. What had the good commander found back there? More drink, perhaps, or a hidden cache of the good petits fours—or an assignation with some gentlewoman long divested of her virtue and eager to stamp what was left into dust and ecstasy? James fairly bounced his way over—just to get a peek. Just to share in the sweets if there were any. Just to be titillated with an eyeful if he could manage it.

With a glance backward to check if there were any eyes on him—indeed, there were not—James pushed the curtain aside by a mere inch to peep beyond it. The light was low and there was a maze of stacked chairs, but one was upright and in it sat the commander, shoulders slumped, nursing a glass of whiskey. He was trim with broad shoulders and golden red hair gone askew as if lately run through with rough fingers. There was a quirk in his brow that James fancied had him looking rather permanently concerned. With thin lips he kissed the edge of the glass and tucked his nose into it, breathing of it instead of sipping. Eyes shut. Savoring, as one might a lover.

James’s silly young prick twitched in his trousers. It was ever more optimistic than James was himself—and James was so optimistic as to take leave of his senses, as William was always quick to remind him.

The commander’s name broke over him like a wave, then. This was Francis Crozier. Veteran of multiple Arctic expeditions under Captain Parry, as well as less formal missions in the cold, like that whalers’ rescue. This was the man tipped to join Captain Ross in the Antarctic—an expedition that would surely make knights of both Ross and Crozier. An expedition James dearly wished to join. He could see it now: Mount Fitzjames. Fitzjames Bay. Fitzjames penguins. 

Commander Fitzjames.

James let the curtain drop, drained the rest of his champagne, and straightened himself up. He squared his shoulders and pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. He stepped back only to tread forward again with heavy steps. He let an airy laugh announce him, and then slipped past the curtain only to snap it shut tightly behind himself. 

“Oh!” he exclaimed when he wheeled around and caught sight of Commander Crozier, suddenly upright in his chair, one brow arched and wary. Both his hands were clasped around his glass and bracketed by his knees. “My apologies, sir—I did not see you there. I only wanted—” James rolled his wrist toward the merriment of the ballroom. “—a bit of quiet.”

“Yes,” Crozier said. His voice came out like the croak of a frog, and he cleared his throat. He looked up at James with wide, guileless eyes that had James’s heart stumbling in its timekeeping. “I do understand the need to take a moment for oneself. It is no bother.”

The man was Irish—how had James forgotten? His accent was rough in James’s ear, but the tone was gentle, and the expression indefinable but for the tendril of yearning it inspired low in James’s gut. 

James wet his lips and gestured toward the maze of chairs. 

“May I?” he asked.

“Please,” Crozier said.

James pulled down a chair and arranged himself opposite Crozier, whose gaze never wavered from him. The back of James’s neck heated.

“You, sir, seem a veteran of finding the quiet,” James said.

Crozier snorted.

“My one true talent,” he said.

James held his hand out in the scant space between them. 

“James Fitzjames.”

Crozier took his hand and pumped it twice before letting go. The broad palm was calloused and the grip firm without attempting to prove anything. James’s blood went rollicking through him. He bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself. 

“Francis Crozier,” Crozier said. “Congratulations on your promotion. Well deserved.”

“And to you,” James said, barely containing the urge to preen. “I confess I am envious of your adventures in the north.”

One corner of Crozier’s mouth twisted up in a smile. 

“Somehow freezing my bollocks off in the Arctic circle seems less hazardous than your trek from the warmth of the near east.”

James barked out a laugh.

“Well,” he said. “The warmer climes do have their perils.” He wanted to lean back, to cross his legs and appear careless as a little lord, but the champagne had his mind floating about unanchored even as his blood thundered through him, urging him toward the officer before him. He planted his elbows on his parted knees, caring not a whit that he might now appear a child rapt before a worldly man. “I should like to see the poles, I think,” he said with a sigh. 

“There is nothing like the north for solitude,” Crozier said. He lifted his glass to his lips and sipped, eyes never wavering from James’s. “Nothing and no one for hundreds of miles.”

“Other than a crew of seventy men, sprouting from each other’s armpits.”

Crozier chuckled.

“Other than that,” he said. He dropped his gaze and ran a hand through his hair. He drank again of his whiskey and crossed his legs. “These functions,” he said, gesturing toward the banquet hall. “A man can barely hear himself think.”

James imagined Crozier had a difficult time with the niceties of these banquets—he seemed to lack the pretenses necessary to smile and flatter and politic his way into desirable positions. He must be nearly forty, and only now a commander? No amount of fine sailing could conquer the fact that he was Irish and possessed of a melancholic disposition. James, for one, reveled in the social games and subtleties of bending greater men to his own purpose, all while making them believe they were the ones with the reins in their hands. He could see, however, that Crozier was not like James himself, had either never learned the right manner of whisper or had sneered at its efficacy as somehow dishonorable. 

James could work with such a man. James could work with any man.

“False people, false friends,” he said, and Crozier turned his attentions back to James. “Too many have forgotten what is it to stand on deck, nothing between one’s crew and one’s enemy but one’s own wits and a rifle—or they never knew in the first place.”

Crozier was nodding.

“And the hangers-on,” he said. “More eager for one’s shine to rub off on them than to know the substance of one’s character.”

“A travesty,” James said. “But in its own way, a boon, yes? Because when one stumbles upon a like mind, a kindred spirit—then one knows one’s true friends.”

“Yes,” Crozier said faintly, and cleared his throat again. “Yes, I suppose that is true.”

“It is…wearying,” James said, “to stand among them, to smile and laugh, when in truth one is apart from them.”

Crozier leaned in now, his knees nearly touching James’s own.

“That’s it precisely,” he said, eyes bright even in the darkness. “Tell me, Lieutenant Fitzjames—”

“Please,” James said, venturing a touch of his fingertips to Crozier’s knee. “Call me James.”

“James,” Crozier murmured. “Then you must call me Francis, when there is no one about to bang on about rank.” The pace of James’s heartbeat ticked up when he saw the tip of Crozier’s tongue dart out to wet his lips. “Have you a new commission yet, James?”

“I am to report month after next to HMS _Excellent_ for training in gunnery and sciences.” 

“Sciences?” Crozier said. “Serendipity.” He sat back in his chair and tipped the last of his whiskey down his throat. He swiped his thumb across his bottom lip and pinned James with his gaze. “If you wish it, you could put in to join Ross and me when we sail to Antarctica in two years’ time. I could request to have you aboard _Terror_ as second lieutenant.”

“Commander Crozier—”

Crozier arched his brow. James ducked his head in a show of modesty.

“Francis,” he said. “I hardly know what to say. It would be an honor. Thank you, sir.”

“The honor is mine,” Francis said. He stood, and James followed suit. “I’m for another drink,” he said, and winked. “Guard our hiding hole jealously—shall I bring you something?”

“Champagne, please,” James said. “If it’s no trouble.”

“None at all.” Francis smiled and slipped out behind the curtain. 

James peered through the sliver between curtain and wall to watch Crozier creep along the edges of the room on his way to the bar. Deftly on feet accustomed to steadying him against the rock and sway of the sea, Crozier veritably danced away from anyone who might waylay him from his task. James huffed a laugh and wondered if Crozier ever actually danced with any ladies who might turn an admiring eye on him. 

He lost sight of the man soon enough, and saw Dundy’s head bent toward one George Barrow, a prize fool. James was glad not to be in conversation with the man, but had resolved upon their first meeting some three years ago now that he would be ever watchful for an opening with him—his folly could be James’s gain, someday. On the other side of the room, James saw Graham Gore speaking with Sir John Ross and found he could not envy that interaction either. Sir John Ross had a way of making one feel as if one were the excrement scraped off a better man’s shoe.

Crozier might be James’s ticket to a real position, real glory, but he seemed one of those men whose competence outshone his own ambitions. A handicap in an officer but an asset for any expedition that might encounter hairy situations on the water. Crozier, James decided, was a good man to keep happy. To have in one’s stable of friends.

That he had wide shoulders and strong hands and kind eyes were nothing to scoff at, either.

James’s heart began to race again when he saw Crozier approach, a drink in each hand. He stepped back, and Crozier met his eyes as he slid past the curtain once again. He handed James the flute of champagne and lifted his glass. James clinked his glass to Crozier’s.

“To the quiet,” Crozier said, voice low.

“To you, Francis,” James said. They drank, eyes locked. James wondered if Crozier could hear the thundering of his heart. They held their glasses at their sides, the space between them growing smaller as it filled with humidity. James fought the urge to sink to his knees and bury his face at the apex of Crozier’s thighs. He needed a signal first—a look, a sweep of the eyelashes, a minute nod. James held his breath.

It rushed out of him when Crozier turned himself around and nudged James toward the crack in the curtain. James bit back a moan but allowed himself to arch back into the solidity of Crozier’s body, but Crozier set a hand on his hip and held him fast.

“Look at them all, James,” Crozier murmured into the hollow of James’s ear. “They’d as soon laugh at your misfortune as they would shake your hand.”

“They did,” James said, truth spilling from him despite all the practice of his silvered tongue. “They have.”

He had turned the story of losing his cargo, losing his ship, losing his _health_ into a great jape that inspired laughter at the punchline every time. Laughter that he told himself did not shred at his heart. A story’s comedy or tragedy lies in how it’s told; James promised himself long ago he would have control of any laughter that came his way.

“Then we are the same,” Crozier said, and rocked the stiff column of his prick into James’s backside. James choked back a moan and pushed into the contact.

“Francis,” he gasped.

“And the admirals themselves,” Crozier went on. “Happy enough to send a thousand men just like you and I to our deaths for another feather in their cap.”

A yank of his belt and a twist of his waistband and James’s arse was exposed to the cool air, the heat of Crozier’s body. James pressed his arse into Crozier, but Crozier held himself back. That big hand stroked over one cheek and squeezed.

“I would rather be on a ship, sharing a drink and some tobacco with the friend of my heart as the waves buffet us to and fro,” Crozier said. 

“At least the waves are honest,” James said. The hand on his hip tightened and pulled him into Crozier’s chest as Crozier nosed up James’s neck. James let his eager prick free; he’d rather a mess against these curtains than in his trousers with no means to hide it.

“If I cannot have the sea…” Crozier said. The hand on James’s arse lifted away and left him bereft, only to return to probe at his crevice slick with saliva. James widened his stance and canted his hips up. Crozier brushed over his hole maddeningly, circling the rim but never breeching.

“Please,” James said. “Please, Francis.”

“Hush,” Crozier said, and the hand on his hip skimmed up his chest and then two fingers were in James’s mouth, stoppering his shameful begging. In its absence he sucked at Crozier’s fingers. “Look at them, James. All those upright men and women, so eager for stories, for riches, for the dream of the Union Jack waving on every shore. How little they know of the truth of it—the dirt and the grit and the things no man should be asked to do. Even the captains. Even the admirals. The ones who should know best. All of them, living in a dream. But not us, James.”

James’s hole felt greedy, grasping at the tease of Crozier’s fingers. He pushed back and bore down and finally the tip of a finger slid inside. James’s grunt was muffled by the fingers in his mouth, and the finger in his arse pushed in further before rocking back out again.

“You like that,” Crozier murmured, and James made an eager sound of affirmation, too insensate to care how his utterances might humiliate him. 

Crozier took his time pushing one finger in and out, swirling it about the walls of James’s arse until he felt loose and hungrier still. James pressed back even as he let one hand creep down to grip his prick. If he jerked himself the way he wished, the curtains would be disturbed, and someone would come to investigate. James settled for squeezing the head of his prick and grinding down on Crozier’s single vexatious finger. 

“What would they think, I wonder?” Crozier said, pulling his finger out. He spat on his hand and then there were two fingers inside James, knuckles taut against his rim. James bore down to get them deeper, squeezing his eyes shut. “No, don’t close your eyes,” Crozier said. “Look at them. What would they think if they knew there were a pair of sodomites just beyond the curtain? What would they think if they knew their Royal Navy were utterly filthy with them?”

James snapped his hips back and forced Crozier’s fingers all the way inside. They were thick and they crooked inside him. James lit up from the inside, vision bursting into stars as his knees buckled, but the arm around him, the hand on his face and fingers in his mouth, held him upright against Crozier’s body. When would Crozier batter that great cock into James’s waiting arse? He was ready. He was more than ready.

Crozier seemed in no hurry. At a leisurely pace he frigged James, muttering filth into his ear all the while. James watched couples dance and old friends laugh and young officers attempt to flatter old ones, but it might as well all have been static and wind for the crank of Crozier’s fingers up his arse. When James felt the peak of his ecstasy coiling about the base of his spine, the roll and snap of his hips became more frantic. Crozier answered him in kind; he pistoned his fingers into James’s arsehole with furious abandon and dropped the hand from James’s mouth to close over the head of James’s prick. James gulped in air like a drowning man breeching the surface of the water, but he swallowed back the shout that threatened to give them away.

“Come on, James,” Crozier was saying, “be a good lad, James, that’s it, James,” and so on. The queer lilt of his name on Crozier’s Irish tongue finally caught on something deep in the hottest pool of his arousal and then Crozier pressed that spot inside him and he was gasping, blind, spurting copiously into Crozier’s hand and over the heavy velvet of the curtain before them. James slumped forward but Crozier held him steady. He let him sink to the floor and then James was swallowing the thick brute of Crozier’s cock down just in time to catch the stream of spend that accompanied Crozier’s choked off cry.

Crozier collapsed into a chair and James crawled forward, uncaring of the picture he made, to rest his head at the juncture of Croziers thighs. Crozier’s hand carded through his hair for how long he knew not. Crozier groped for his glass of whiskey and knocked back all that was left, and then he handed James his flute of champagne. James let the bubbles wash away the taste of Crozier’s enjoyment.

Two years later, James put himself forward for the Ross Expedition to Antarctica. When the Admiralty denied the request and sent him instead to HMS _Ganges_ as gunnery lieutenant, he felt a disappointment that was soon subsumed by new friendships, new firefights, new ways to claw himself higher and higher in the ranks of the Navy—in the eyes of his betters.

Some six years after that, when he saw Francis Crozier again, he was taken aback by the flat contempt in his eyes, even as he shook his hand and said his name. Crozier was a captain by then, his hair less vibrant, his waist less trim. He acted for all the world as if they had never passed an evening together, cloistered away from the rest of the revelers. All he had for James were snide, bitter words, and soon, that was all James had for him, too.

1850

Francis lived in a townhouse a stone’s throw away from Regent’s Park—a fashionable part of the city that seemed a poor compromise between Francis and Miss Cracroft. Francis was a man made for a country house, modest and cozy and set apart, where it was quiet, while Miss Cracroft was for grander things: great halls, gilt moldings, a host of live-ins. For her, Francis would stay in the city; for him, Miss Cracroft would sacrifice most of the comforts of her previous life. James questioned if either would be happy that way. 

James wanted to despise Miss Cracroft. Who was she, to refuse twice the man she loved? What character had she, that it would take five years and every horror to make her realize she had but half a life without him?

And yet, James could muster no more hatred for her than he could Francis. Had they not all changed in those five years? Had their priorities not been rearranged most violently, in the same unrelenting manner as the passage of time? For his own part, James felt he was a different man entire to the pup—the buffoon!—who volunteered so ill-prepared for Sir John’s run at the passage. Besides, how could he fault Miss Cracroft for loving Francis when James himself was the fool who did so without hope of reciprocation? How could he fault her for seeing all Francis was and seizing it at last with both hands, creature comforts be damned? 

James would, if he were she. If he had the luxury of soft cheeks and cheery flounces, small hands and a bosom for Francis to lay his head on, James would have Francis for a husband in the space of a heartbeat. He could not hate in Miss Cracroft what he so wanted for himself. Perhaps it would be easier if he could, but the entire matter filled him with grief and longing, not envy and hatred. 

James arrived at Francis’s home with a fruitcake in hand—what did one give a man on the night before his wedding, if not a bottle of his preferred spirits? Thus he bought a fruitcake from the bakery down the street, heavy and ridiculous in his hands, and James arranged his face in a smile when the door opened.

Thomas Blanky was behind it.

“Captain,” he said.

“Good lord, Thomas, are we not beyond such things?” James said. 

Blanky guffawed in that low, perverse way he had, and James felt his heart swell. 

“I’ve missed you, Thomas,” he blurted.

Thomas made some guttural, Northerly sound and clasped him by the shoulders. He gave James a little shake.

“You’re gonna make a hard auld bugger cry, talkin’ like that,” he said. “Get in now—you’re late.” 

James shucked his jacket and hung it, but Thomas was easing into a greatcoat.

“Are you going?” James said. “Already?”

Thomas wheeled around to face him, brows raised.

“Aye,” he said. “And I was the last, before you. I’m for my wife, and a kiss before bedtime.”

“The last,” James murmured. 

“You missed Ross, and Little, and Jopson.”

“Hell.” James passed a hand over his face. “I’m a prize ass, Thomas.”

Thomas paused to give him a long look, the kind that made him feel like a squirming child on the ship he captained. Thomas snapped the collar of his coat up and arranged the shoulders properly.

“I know you got the same invitation as the rest of us,” he said. “What are we to make of a man who arrives six hours late wearing the world’s saddest smile, hmm?” 

“Thomas…”

Thomas closed the space between them with two stumping steps and gripped him again, this time by the biceps. His eyes bore into James’s with an intensity that made James’s heart vibrate into his throat. 

“It’s good to see you, James,” he said. “Perhaps I won’t tomorrow, eh?”

“Are you not coming to the wedding? Thomas?”

Thomas patted the side of James’s head roughly, and he was out the door without another word. James stared after him. 

Footfall announced the man of the hour, but his voice arrived before he did.

“Thomas? Are you still—”

James turned in time to see Francis enter the receiving hall. His traitorous heart quailed to see the surprise and happiness split over Francis’s face.

“James!”

“Hello, Francis,” he said, and held out his hands to take Francis’s. The fruitcake, long forgotten, landed instead. Francis took it from him, laughing.

“We considered sending out search parties, but turns out you were just slaving away over a hot oven for me!”

James snorted. Francis looked up at him, smile wide, and they caught on each other, laughter fading. They stood there for long moments, drinking each other in. When at last Francis shifted his weight from one foot to the other, James dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. 

“I’m sorry, Francis,” James said. “I should have sent a note. I’m not one for crowds, these days. I’ll leave you to your rest—big day tomorrow, eh?”

“For God’s sake, James,” Francis said, and slung an arm over his shoulder. “Come and sit by the fire with me. I’ll not even mention that five other men with whom you are intimately acquainted does not a crowd make.”

“How generous of you,” James said, and Francis sent him a slantways smirk. He led them to the drawing room, where a low fire blazed. 

“Tea?” Francis said. “I regret to say I’ve nothing more diverting to offer.”

“Ah, no thank you, Francis. I’ll be up all night. And pah, diversion.” James waved a hand. “I find the drink affects me differently now. I’m as abstemious as you are, I imagine.”

Up went the brow. James took a seat on the sofa as Francis settled into a wingback beside him. James watched him sit back and stick his feet near the hearth. The sight of Francis’s feet in slippers filled James with tenderness. 

“I do hope you’re well, James.” Francis peered at him with a concern that near tore James’s heart in two. “I hope you don’t find yourself…in a clinch, as I did.”

James reached over and squeezed Francis’s knee before sitting back again. Christ, he should have accepted the tea simply for something to do with his hands. 

“No, Francis, don’t worry yourself over that,” he said. “It is merely that when I was young, I would have a drink or five and be all cheer, or I and my mates might go carousing and get into some ridiculous bind that would make a raucous story later. But now…” he shook his head. The fire crackled.

“Now,” Francis said, softly. James looked up to find he was cradling his cheek in one hand and gazing at James with a fathomless compassion. “Now you find you are alone even amongst friends, and you sink into the melancholy of your solitude. There is no cheer.”

“Only the endless march of days and days.”

Francis hummed his agreement. They lapsed into a silence during which they both stared into the fire, but James itched to hear Francis speak.

“It must be busy, getting ready for a wedding,” he said. 

Francis looked up and straightened, rearranged the cross of his legs.

“I suppose,” he said. “The fittings alone are enough to drive a man mad. Lucky for me Sophia and Lady Jane are arranging everything else to their own standard.” He flashed a rueful smile and spread his hands out. “All I have to do is arrive at the right church in the right waistcoat.” The smile seemed brittle, and faltered from his lips soon enough. “James, I’m sorry,” he said. 

James startled.

“Sorry? Whatever for, my dear man?”

“I haven’t asked after you and your family,” he said. “I haven’t called upon you or invited you round. I’ve been so…consumed.”

“It is a consuming business, getting married,” James said. “Or so I’m told.”

The corner of Francis’s mouth quirked up. 

“You’ll find the right girl soon enough, dashing young captain like you,” Francis said. His gaze skittered away. “Tell me: how is William? Elizabeth? Your niece and nephew?”

James could only stare, heart threatening to plop from his mouth onto the floor. Eventually Francis looked up, question writ into his brow.

“James?”

“I will not, Francis.”

“You’ll not tell me how your brother is?”

“I will not find some poor girl with stars in her eyes and bind her to me with a walk down the aisle that feels the same as a march to the firing squad!”

James sat back, cheeks hot. Francis stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips. James looked away, dragging a hand through his hair. 

“Christ, but a drink would be just the thing,” he muttered.

“If there were drink in this house, I’d be puddle on the floor by now,” Francis said, mild as anything. “And not a sentient one.”

James risked a glance at him.

“What does a man do the night before his wedding if he cannot imbibe?” James said.

“Make a glutton of himself,” Francis said. “Embrace his friends of long standing. Reminisce. Carefully avoid speaking of anything that cuts too close to the bone. Tuck in early, wishing he were a different manner of man.”

“Francis.”

Francis stood and made to stride out of the drawing room.

“Speaking of gluttony,” he said with a clap of his hands, “there’s enough roast and cake left for you. Give me a moment.”

“I’m not hungry, Francis.”

“A scone, then.”

“Francis!”

Francis turned to face him, but his eyes were closed, his cheeks flushed. James’s racing heart knew something he did not, and it bore him to his feet, which took two strides to stand before Francis, close enough to feel the living heat of his body. He stopped just short of reaching his hands out to cradle Francis’s head. 

“What manner of man could possibly be better than Francis Crozier?” James said. 

Francis scoffed and shook his head. 

“The manner of man who felt excitement and joy instead of dread on the eve of his getting everything he ever wanted!” He swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and then stood up straight, meeting James’s gaze. His jaw clenched as he let out a measured breath. “The manner of man capable of grasping at his true desires, and damn what anyone else thinks. Or at least the manner of man who can be honest with himself.”

James felt as though he were balancing, precarious, on a precipice. With caution he reached out and brushed at a lock of hair that had fallen across Francis’s forehead. Francis’s eyes fluttered shut as if pained, and he took hold of James’s wrist. Instead of batting him away, Francis held him there. James cupped his cheek.

“Did you know,” he said, low, “that I’d half-convinced myself you were too drunk to remember that night at the banquet hall?”

“God help me, it was all I could think of some days,” Francis said. “All I saw when I looked at you, preening beside Sir John.”

“You hated me.”

“I wanted to hate you,” Francis said. He stepped closer. “It burned me up, that you didn’t put in to go south with me. It burned me up but never stopped me wanting you.”

James frowned and tilted his head.

“I did put in the request, though,” he said. “It was denied, and so east I went.”

Francis’s brow knit and his mouth flattened. He shook his head. James let out a little laugh and brought his other hand up to frame Francis’s face. 

“Christ, James.”

“You could have bloody well _asked me_ , Francis,” James said. “Anytime in the last five years.”

“I thought you’d had your fun,” Francis said. “That you were mocking me.”

Since emerging from his long illness clear-eyed and at last the captain James had always hoped he’d be, Francis had shed the weight of paranoia that had hung about him like a yoke over the course of the expedition. The reminder of it now jarred James from looking to the past by the light of sentiment. He had no delusions about who Francis was—but so too was he glad of whom he had become.

“Well,” James said. “It certainly was fun. I was not mocking you, Francis, but I was desperately young, and my motives were not exactly pure.”

Francis snorted. 

“As if lust is pure,” he said. He stepped away and leaned over the fire. “It became clear to me, in the years since, that you had been volleying for favor, for position. My darkest thoughts told me you had found me wanting—a rung on the ladder not worth climbing. I’ll not hold that against you, though my ego was battered by it in days past.”

James watched Francis turning away from him. Francis letting him go. The line of Francis’s back, the strong legs. The whole of it broke James’s heart. Everything did now, it seemed. Thickness gathered at the base of his throat, but he swallowed it back.

“I’ve put in for another commission,” he blurted. “I’ll be a first, this time.”

Francis looked up. A twitch that pulled the corners of his mouth downward was all that betrayed him.

“I see,” Francis said, voice empty of all animation, all character. “And where shall you go?”

“The south Pacific,” James said. “There is flora and fauna there the likes of which we’ve never seen. Likely people unknown to us, as well.”

Francis swallowed and nodded. He turned back to the fire. 

“When do you leave,” Francis said.

“Not til May,” James said. 

Francis forced out a pained imitation of a smile. 

“Then congratulations are in order,” he said. 

James took a step closer to him, and another.

“Do you—” The words tangled up on his tongue, turned his breath into a knot. He aborted a gesture that would end with his hand on Francis’s shoulder, and his fist fell to his side. He swallowed. “Do you have any captainly words of wisdom?”

James barely managed to contain his wince as Francis’s expression knitted into one of befuddled hurt. Christ, but James was an utter heel.

“James…”

“I value your expertise, Francis, you know that,” James said. The words came out in a rush, all wrong. There was nothing in them with the weight of what James wanted to say, and yet they kept tumbling out. “Truly, I—I await your advice.”

Francis’s mouth hardened. 

“Remember to put the lives of your men before the bloom of your pride,” he said. “Remember that despite rank, should you go to meet God, you and each of your men from the lowest ship’s boy to your shiny new second will stand before Him as equals.” Francis sneered and turned away. His hand clenched as if around a phantom glass of cut crystal. “And for God’s sake, remember not to wait until your dearest friend loses a limb to get your head on straight.” A muscle in his jaw ticked when he clenched his teeth and looked up. “All of which you damn well know.”

“I—Francis, I mean only—”

“Why are you doing this, James?” Francis demanded, eyes blazing. 

A wild and reckless urge blew through James like a frigid wind. It rattled through his bones and he felt, suddenly, as though he had been a dead and desolate thing, a shade half haunting this new and foreign England, but by some swell of hope he was alive once more, and his newly beating heart bore him toward Francis. 

“Francis,” he said urgently. “Tell me you’re happy. Tell me there’s nothing you want more than to marry Miss Cracroft come morning.”

“And if I do?” Francis snapped. “You’ll never share another cup of tea with me again? Never send me a letter, never take my hand?”

“I will wing myself to the south Pacific and never again darken your door,” James said. “I will leave you in _peace_ , Francis.”

“And if I want no such false peace?”

“Damn you, Francis,” James said. “Do not jest with me.”

Francis closed the space between them, hands rough on James’s shoulders.

“It is you who jests,” he said, voice harsh. “You who turns up doe-eyed to my house long after other guests have left, you who looks at me as though you could swallow me whole, and you who threatens to wing yourself clear to the other side of the world just to get away from me!”

“What would you have me _do_ Francis!” James wrenched out of his grip. “I will stand for you tomorrow morning and smile at your perfect bride but I will be _damned_ if I stay to witness your marital bliss all the rest of my days, telling myself I am satisfied with the crumbs of your company when the truth of it is I am a man starved and I want the meal entire!”

Francis surged upward and crashed his mouth against James’s. James grunted but parted his lips for Francis’s tongue to sweep inside. Sparks ignited his blood and sent it singing southward. James tugged Francis’s shirt from his trousers, and with a flick of his wrist Francis’s prick was free, but before he could drop to his knees and swallow it down, Francis pushed James facedown onto the sofa and shoved his trousers down about his thighs.

James gasped Francis’s name, scrabbling for purchase. He spread his knees and gave a shout when Francis’s hands landed on his arse and parted his cheeks. The heat of Francis’s body behind him threatened to consume him. James cried out when Francis bent low and scraped his teeth on the small of his back and over the crests of his cheeks. 

“Tell me you want this,” Francis said. “Tell me nothing else will do.”

“Yes, Francis, yes, yes, God, please.”

Francis growled, a sound that reverberated through James’s body. James pressed his arse back and pleaded again, chanting Francis’s name. He wedged a hand between his body and the sofa to take hold of his prick, but his senses were stolen from him when Francis licked a stripe over his hole. James melted into the cushions and moaned. Francis’s tongue was merciless—swirling and laving, pressing inside relentlessly until James’s hole was loose and grasping, his crevice a mess of saliva. James rocked back into Francis’s face with equal shamelessness, yanking at his own cock with violent abandon. In James’s memory, Francis’s fingers inside him were maddening, luxuriating in the slowness of the tease, but now Francis sucked his arse and pulsed his tongue past the rim as if he were ravenous, as if James were a meal to be devoured. Francis’s name fell from his lips in desperation.

Finally Francis reared up and steadied James with hands on his hips.

“James,” he whispered. He sounded a ruin. James glanced behind himself and found Francis red-faced and panting, brow knitted. Looking to him for permission or perhaps reassurance, as if he’d ever needed such a thing before. James reached back and grasped Francis’s cock and snubbed the lovely wide head of it against his arsehole. 

“I need it, Francis,” James said. “Need you.”

Francis groaned and pressed forward. He breeched the first ring of muscle and James cried out, throwing his head back and arching upward as he bore down to take more. Francis swore and lashed his arms around James’s chest, hauling him back. James moaned and pushed down until he bloomed around Francis’s cock, second ring giving way until Francis was buried abruptly to the hilt. Francis sucked a toothy kiss into James’s pulsepoint as James’s eyes shut, vision spotting. He surged up and clutched at Francis’s hands, clenched around the sweet intrusion of his cock, and fucked down hard against it. He throbbed and grasped and rocked, wanting more of the thick slide of cock through his arse, the battery of the gland inside him. Francis’s smell and his arms and his voice, the consuming fire of his attention, his need, his desire. 

James’s pleasure tightened, became a taut and maddening need deep and low, and he dropped his head back down into the cushions to snap his pelvis back into Francis’s prick. Francis pushed his hips down and James keened, wetness spurting from his prick like piss. He cried out and Francis fucked him faster, faster, faster. James wailed Francis’s name, begging without care, shoving his arse backwards to take him deeper, harder. He felt pinned and open, flayed wide and seen. Francis inside him was an all-consuming ecstasy that threatened to eclipse him, body and soul. 

The stretch of Francis’s cock in his arse, the thick, slick slide of his fuck, the smooth head dragging back and forth across that spot inside him, his own hand frantic on his prick—all of it sharpened into an unbearable rapture until James shattered and lost himself to bliss. 

“James, James, James,” Francis was saying when James came back to himself. James hadn’t had a drink in months but he felt drunk on it, the vowels of his name quirking on Francis’s tongue.

“Spend in me, Francis,” he said. “Give it to me, Francis, make me feel it, make me _taste_ it, fuck me deep, Francis, please, please, please—”

Francis’s thrusts grew frenzied and irregular. With a roar he slammed inside once, twice, and then James could feel the pulse of his cock tight against his rim. James shouted and muffled a curse into the cushions. Another dollop of spend squeezed itself free of his prick. Francis rocked against him, panting, and then slumped over his back. 

Eventually Francis pulled his prick free of James and together they slid boneless to the rug, Francis draped half on top of James, James’s arms slung over Francis’s body against the cool of the air, their evaporating sweat. James groped for Francis’s hand, and when he slotted their fingers together, Francis squeezed them tight. They listened to the pop and crackle of the fire blazing on.

“Don’t marry Sophia tomorrow,” James said. “Come away with me.”

“To the south Pacific?”

“Anywhere,” James said. “Anywhere you want to go, I will follow. Just be with me, not her. Be with me, Francis.”

He heard Francis swallow, felt the working of Francis’s throat against his shoulder. They were still clothed, though their clothes were ruined and askew. He wished there were nothing between them. Skin against skin, his sweat on Francis’s body, Francis’s cells indistinguishable from his own. If he could but merge into Francis, a single monstrous creature replete in their togetherness, he would. He would.

“I wanted her for so long,” Francis said, low into the skin at James’s neck. James shut his eyes and tried to stem the wound Francis dealt to his heart. “I wanted her for so long, and so single-mindedly, that when she finally accepted my suit I never considered that the man she now saw as worthy of her was not the man who loved her. I could not admit that I had become a man who loved another. God, James.”

James turned onto his side. Francis’s spend trickled from his body and he felt not shame or dirtiness, but triumph. He laid his hand on Francis’s face, and with a sweep of his pale lashes Francis looked up and met his gaze. 

“There I was, knighted and betrothed, and all I could think was, _I wonder if James is happy. If only James were here. If only I could glance beside me and see if he is thinking just the same as I._ ” He shook his head, pressed his lips together. 

James murmured his name. Kissed him. They were naked then, just the two of them, laid bare with all they had shared between them. In the Arctic at the end of civility or in London amid the pretenses of it—it mattered not. James knew Francis, better than anyone ever had. James had allowed Francis to know him. To be seen, to be known—it was a relief that felt more like a miracle. James’s poor and battered heart was given and gone, with no hope of having it back. 

But Francis would steward it for him. Francis would guard it, and carry it, and hold all the love inside it with the reverence James never believed could be his. 

James would do the same for him, to the ends of the earth and back. 

**End**


End file.
